Faculty
Ranjan Pal, PhD (in Computer Science), is a Research Scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management who is a cybersecurity expert and broadly conducts and leads a team on cyber risk and resilience management research through the Cybersecurity at MIT Sloan (CAMS) consortium. He uses the interplay of computer science, decision science, and operations research to solve research problems. Ranjan is also currently an invited member of the systems cyber resilience working group (WG) at the World Economic Forum contributing his expert insights on solving the most important societal challenges on cyber resilience—some insights reaching the White House.
Among other things, Ranjan pioneered the field of mathematical models adjudicating the market sustainability of cyber-insurance solutions. He has acted as strategic cyber risk management advisor to corporations and has been an invited expert on government research review panels in science and technology. Ranjan has published/contributed to nearly 100 research articles in academic, policy, and thought leadership in business outlets that include journal and conference proceedings, World Economic Forum reports, Forbes, The Financial Times, The Economic Times, The Financial Express, Re-InAsia, and The Times of India.
Ranjan has been an invited speaker in nearly 50 venues around the globe, and has held visiting scholar and faculty positions at leading business and technology institutes of the world. These include the University of Michigan, University of Cambridge, Princeton University, Indian School of Business, King's College London, Tsinghua University, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, and the All India Institute of Medical Science. Ranjan has been honored with multiple 'Best Paper Award' nominations from premier conferences on his research on cyber risk management; is an associate editor of the ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems; and serves on the Technical Program Committees of the Winter Simulation Conference and the ACM SIGSIM PADS Conference.
In his spare time, Ranjan is a scholar and life-long research student of Vedic astrology (Jyotish) through his family tradition. He is the author of Navamsa: A Practical Treatise in Prediction, (an Amazon bestseller), Does Rahu Give Spiritual Ethos: An Argumentative Analysis in Jyotish, and Rahu and Spirituality: A Triveni of Parashari, Nakshatra, and Nadi Astrology. Ranjan is formally and personally trained by the brilliant and renowned Richa Shukla, equivalent of the Jyotish Alankar and Jyotish Acharya degrees for professional Vedic astrology. Richa is a disciple of the world-renowned astrology legend Shri K. N. Rao. Ranjan also studies Vedanta philosophy.
Zeijlemaker, Sander, Ranjan Pal, Jeffrey Proudfoot, and Michael Siegel. In AMCIS 2025 Proceedings, Montreal, Canada: August 2025.
Kim, Goeun, Sander Zeijlemaker, Jeffrey Proudfoot, Ranjan Pal, and Michael Siegel. In AMCIS 2025 Proceedings, Montreal, Canada: August 2025.
Ranjan Pal, Konnie Duan, and Rohan Sequeira. In Proceedings of the 39th ACM SIGSIM Conference on Principles of Advanced Discrete Simulation, edited by Adelinde Uhrmacher and Ernest Page. New York, NY: 2025.
Zhang, Cynthia, Ranjan Pal, Corwin Nicholson, and Michael Siegel. In Proceedings of 2024 Winter Simulation Conference (WSC), Orlando, FL: December 2024.
Pal, Ranjan, Konnie Duan, Rohan Xavier Sequeira, and Michael Siegel. In Proceedings of 2024 Winter Simulation Conference (WSC), Orlando, FL: December 2024.
Pal, Ranjan, Rohan Xavier Sequeira, Sander Zeijlmaker, and Michael Siegel. In Proceedings of 2024 Winter Simulation Conference (WSC), Orlando, FL: December 2024.
Research scientist Ranjan Pal and co-authors wrote: "Because large language model (LLM) supply chains (SCs) are so complicated and used by so many businesses, it's smart for them to know what cyber problems their LLM supply chains have and how to stop and deal with catastrophic LLM SC cyber incidents that can bring business IT performance to a halt."
Research scientist Ranjan Pal and co-authors wrote: "Quantum capability can be said to threaten confidentiality 'in the far future,' but it also destroys trust in the entire digital supply chain. It turns your vendor supply chain network into a long-term liability, and weaponizes authenticity. Further, it creates a forced migration in cryptographic resources which your operations teams are structurally incapable of executing."
Vulnerabilities in AI-assisted technology can snowball into national security risks; building safeguards and governance standards from day one can mitigate the risks from spreading across the network and causing large scale disruptions
Research scientist Ranjan Pal and co-authors wrote: "Agentic AI will bring new, complex types of cyber threats. Therefore, we should have a multi-layered and intelligent approach to protect against them using both existing protective measures as well as new ones designed specifically to prevent the operation of autonomous systems."
